AN OPEN BOOK

THE AC­TRESS HOLDS NOTH­ING BACK AS SHE OPENS UP ABOUT FI­NAN­CIAL STRUG­GLES, MAR­RIAGE AND MORE

Now at the pin­na­cle of her ca­reer, Melissa Mc­Carthy dishes on past hard­ships, mar­riage and much more.

It was nearly a decade ago that Melissa Mc­Carthy first made her mark in Hol­ly­wood with scen­esteal­ing roles in Mike & Molly and Brides­maids — and since then, she’s grown to be­come one of the high­est-paid women the busi­ness, earn­ing around $18 mil­lion in 2017. But what fans may not re­al­ize is that the beloved star, 48, barely had a penny to her name when she first set out to pur­sue her act­ing dreams. Un­happy liv­ing on her fam­ily’s Illi­nois farm, she flew to NYC solo with just $35 in her pocket, con­fess­ing that she looked to her par­ents “for help when I couldn’t quite make it.” The Emmy win­ner also cred­its Mom and Dad for her suc­cess: “The fact that [they] didn’t give me guilt changed the course of my life,” she ad­mit­ted. “Be­cause if I’d been guilted out, I def­i­nitely would have quit.”

RIS­ING ABOVE

But even af­ter find­ing suc­cess and cash­ing siz­able pay­checks, Melissa faced crit­i­cism, mostly for her weight. Though she’s taken the high road, she’s ad­mit­ted that back in the day, the harsh words would have stung. “I’ve been ev­ery size in the world. Parts of my 20s, I was in great shape, but I didn’t ap­pre­ci­ate it,” she ex­plained. “If I was a 6 or an 8, I thought, ‘Why aren’t I a 2 or a 4?’” Now, she’s able to see a dif­fer­ent side of things. “In­stead of get­ting mad... I al­ways feel like, ‘Oh, I hope you meet some­one soon that you can talk to, some­one that re­ally makes you laugh,’” she shared of how she han­dles haters. These days, the ac­tress fo­cuses on time with her hus­band of 13 years, direc­tor Ben Fal­cone, and their daugh­ters Vi­vian, 10 and Geor­gette, 8. And though Melissa and her man have grown closer from the pro­jects they've worked on to­gether, they have faced a few ob­sta­cles. (Ear­lier this year Ben ad­mit­ted that di­rect­ing his wife in her Life of the Party sex scene was "very tricky.") But over­all, Melissa couldn't be hap­pier with life. "I feel like I have two great kids and the dreami­est hus­band on the planet," she gushed. Ëvery­thing else is just a work in progress."

“It’s the same thing I tell my girls: ‘If some­body is be­ing mean, they’re prob­a­bly re­ally not happy,’” Melissa said of brush­ing off neg­a­tive com­ments.